Tag: donations

On with the show

The Friends Spring Used Book Sale made over $7,600 for library programs. It was of one of our most successful sales ever.

It would not have been possible without the efforts of more than 70 volunteers. Those volunteers were recruited and scheduled by Katie Allnutt, herself a volunteer and board member of Friends for two decades. Katie also volunteered weekly in the library, sorting donations and filling, over the years, four or more boxes of books sorted books each week. It takes over 200 boxes of sorted books to put on each sale and, it is safe to day, Katie touched most of them. Thank you, Katie!

Our next sale will be October 22 – 24. We welcome your donations. We start the sale inventory from scratch twice a year. Please see the Donations page of this website for how to donate books and other materials for the sale and for other ways you can help support Friends of the Forest Grove Library.

What happens to the books you donate?

Books and other materials donated to the Forest Grove City Library are first reviewed by Library Staff to see if they should be added to the Library’s inventory.

For those that are not selected, and for books de-selected from the Library collection by staff, Friends of the Library volunteers check used book prices online to pick out those that are valued at $8 or more. Most of them will be put on sale at Amazon.com under Friends’ dealership name, “forestgrovelibraryfriends.”  Friends have more than 2600 books on sale through Amazon and these online sales will net more than $8,000 for the Library during the Friends fiscal year.

Books in good condition that are not selected for online sales are sorted by Friends volunteers for the twice-a-year book sales and for ongoing sales in the library. The twice-a-year sales are Friends’ primary income source.  They have been making about $10,000 a year.  The ongoing in-library sales are a new Friends project.

Making money for the Library is one of Friends’ top priorities but this process for library donations and discards has other benefits: (1) Between donations and discards, the library has around 12,000 books to dispose of every six months, (2) turning donations away would be bad for the Library’s public relations, (3) friends efforts make money for library programs and help recirculate these books in our own community.